Take a second before you read this to look in the mirror. Go on, it’ll be worth it. I’ll be here when you get back.
OK, how’d that go? Did you like what you saw? Probably not. Feeling a bit puffy? See a zit in a conspicuous area? Did you want to punch yourself for the sin of experiencing the natural course of ageing? These feelings are normal. Being disappointed in how you look is a time-honored tradition; it’s just that now, we have the means to fix all that. GLP-1s mean you can lose weight quickly, without doing much more than shoving a needle in your bum a few times a month. Plastic surgery, Botox, fillers, Turkish hair plugs. We live in the golden age of techno-vanity, where “self-improvement” can be had for a few bucks (and days and days of living in bandages like a hipster mummy). The odious trend of “looksmaxxing” is the natural nadir of our collective obsession with not being ugly.
Within the fetid petri dish that we call the internet, looksmaxxing has taken hold with a subsection of otherwise functioning individuals. To be a looksmaxxer is to purposefully carve up your face, inject steroids into any willing orifice, and occasionally using crystal meth to suppress your appetite. This is not as appealing as it sounds, folks, because it also comes with a healthy dose of racism!
It’s bad enough that someone is compelled to smash their own jaw to look like Bruce Campbell in the movie Escape from LA, but doing it because you want to embody some fictional European ideal is the cherry on top of the turd. Don’t be surprised if a feature of extreme physical manipulation ends up being eugenics. It’s not just about racial homogeny, though. It’s also about heights of bodily perfection that require, again, using crystal meth.
One of the most prominent influencers in the looksmaxxing community is 19-year-old Braden Peters, who refers to himself unironically as “Clavicular”. Remember when nicknames sounded cool? What happened to all the “Dukes” or “Jimbos”? I would take a “Clem” any day of the week at this point.
Peters referred to Vice-President JD Vance as “subhuman” (don’t blame me, I didn’t say it) on a recent Daily Wire podcast. Peters, who only recently became old enough to vote, claimed he’d vote for Gavin Newsom over Vance in the 2028 presidential election because Newsom is tall and classically handsome. I sort of understand the perspective. I voted for John Edwards in the 2004 primary because of the crossing-guard helmet he called his hair.
Besides the obvious absurdity of this phenomenon, there’s the very depressing idea that anyone is listening to what a 19-year-old has to say about anything. It’s been said that the children are our future, but the operative word is “future”. The future is not right now. It’s hopefully at least 20 years from now, when I’m even older and uglier.
The attention economy of the internet has meant that people are taking advice from someone too young to rent a car. I have an eight-year-old and I don’t ask him for advice on anything. He only eats chicken nuggets and wears Crocs every day. He can’t even tie his own shoes, but if I gave him a YouTube channel and he got 500,000 subscribers, he might convince an entire generation to walk around barefoot.
I do wonder what all this digital insanity will do to my kid’s brain one day. Will he start demolishing his own jawline in order to better resemble Dolph Lundgren? Will he hand out meth at cocktail parties? I suppose the best I can do is model a different sort of masculinity for him – a masculinity that involves being the naturally hideous troll that we are all destined to become. We are given one life to live, and I don’t intend to spend it chasing a mythical sense of aesthetic perfection. I’d rather read books, see films, go bald and gain weight in all the worst places. Real unc behavior.
Being ugly is also easier. Trying to chase perfection is difficult, requires thousands and thousands of dollars of disposable income, and hurts quite a bit. Plus, it’s unfulfilling, because that sort of perfection is not actually possible. It also seems to involve more drugs than I’m willing to experiment with. Life is frustrating enough without adding someone taking a hammer to your face on a semi-regular basis to the regimen. It seems the only benefit to all of that effort is getting attention on social media, a pursuit I outgrew along with my skinny jeans and the music of the Arcade Fire. Besides, history shows us that ugly people have been in control of the world for most of its existence. No one was asking Napoleon to pose for the “Dictators of the Month” calendar. Churchill looked like a bald mole that just saw sunlight for the first time. All the energy spent making yourself conventionally attractive could be better spent making positive change in the world, creating great art, and also sleeping.
This is the legacy I want to pass down to my child: loving, living, and periodically passing out in front of the TV because you ate a very heavy sandwich. That form of perfection is a lot closer than you think.
Dave Schilling is a Los Angeles-based writer and humorist
